May 24, 2007

The day started with a half day field trip to the Jewish quarter. Ophir, our Modern Israeli teacher, was our guide. First, I have to say that I really like the guy. He speaks very understandable English (perhaps because he's lived a long time in the US...) and is very interesting to listen to. He knows how to teach a large group of attention-deficit college students. :) That's a lot more than I can say for our Modern Palestinian teacher... but, well, that's a different story. Back to the Jewish Quarter. :D We started at Zion Gate. He gave us a handout telling all the different uses of the word Zion throughout the ages, throughout scripture. We got to the very end of the paper and moved on, but part of me wanted to stop him and tell him that he forgot a very vital use of Zion—"the pure in heart." hehe. But Ophir is an orthodox Jew, and well, I made a promise not to proselyte. So I held my tongue. But a bunch of us added it to our paper. :D Then we toured four different synagogues. It was neat to see how similar, yet different, each of them are. We were rather rushed through those, though, because they had a bar mitzvah going on and didn't want us to interrupt it. It made me chuckle when we entered the last synagogue (they're all in the same building. More like four different rooms.) because it was filled with refreshments for after the bar mitzvah. It reminded me so much of a Mormon gathering. Ah, yes. They will come in droves when they come. ;)

We went through several different places. I won't try to name them all here. My favorite was a museum we hit at the very end. Back when that portion of Jerusalem was completely abandoned, they started doing serious excavation of the city. All the really big stuff (like a portion of the old city wall) they left so we can still see it now, and the rest they just moved and built on top of. Even some of the new stuff they built on top of. They found a bunch of houses or buildings of some kind, and built on top of it. They just built on stilts so that you can go into the basement and still see everything. That one was fun to walk through and see the actual mosaic tiles and painting on the walls. They had a few displays of the pottery and such that was found there, so I got to see some really cool oil lamps. Those are the kind I want to buy in the city for myself and a few others that have requested them, but I haven't been able to find anything except the really cheap stuff. I need to ask around and figure out where they would sell inexpensive, yet still nice oil lamps.

We got home in time to scarf down some lunch, then head off to class. We had an Old Testament quiz, so all of us had been studying all day. It was craziness. I did well, though. I only missed 2 points. Tragically, I don't recall what it was out of. 30, I think. But that was only because I forgot the name of the King of Tyre. Let's be honest—who knows that? Well, I do now. It's Hiram. We had class straight from lunch to dinner. Then we had a short break, where we all studied intensely for our OT test the next day, then all headed up to the Forum. I'll be quite honest, I have no idea what it was about. Apparently it had a real impact on me. Oh wait—it was an Israeli guy talking about the political end of the current conflict. But I was tired, I was bored, and a little ADD. So I played on my computer, I passed notes with Theresa, and I gave/received back scratches with Theresa and Kathryn. hehe. Good roommates I have.